


I Could Never Forget You

by VeryImportantDemon



Category: Stitchers (TV)
Genre: Cameron is Foggy Nelson, Daredevil AU, F/M, Have fun pls, It's very loosely based off of Daredevil, Kirsten is Matt Murdock, Sort Of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-15 22:38:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13040943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VeryImportantDemon/pseuds/VeryImportantDemon
Summary: Cameron is a baby when he meets the girl. He is actually a baby, mere minutes old. They bring him into the nursery and there's a squealing little girl in the cot next to him. She quiets, somehow, when they place baby Cameron next to her, but he's not Cameron yet. He's so young that he doesn't even have a name yet. He's just a baby boy. But the girl... She has a name. She's someone. She's Kirsten, and she stops crying when they place Cameron next to her.





	I Could Never Forget You

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, elecktramurdockk, this one's for you. Merry Christmas.

Cameron is a baby when he meets the girl. He is actually a baby, mere minutes old. They bring him into the nursery and there's a squealing little girl in the cot next to him. She quiets, somehow, when they place baby Cameron next to her, but he's not Cameron yet. He's so young that he doesn't even have a name yet. He's just a baby boy. But the girl... She has a name. She's someone. She's Kirsten, and she stops crying when they place Cameron next to her. 

He doesn't cry. They don't know why he doesn't cry, but he doesn't make a sound at all. Kirsten turns towards him slightly, not looking at him because she hasn't opened her eyes yet, but she turns towards him like a plant turns to the sun when it grows. Their lives knot together even more inexplicably when a tired nurse enters the room. She's running on coffee and no sleep and she's been here for hours upon hours. So when she intends to pick up Kirsten, she picks up Cameron, instead. 

Of course, Kirsten's parents are understandably startled when they are handed a little boy instead of their girl. They gently point out the mistake and request to meet the unnamed baby boy's parents to remedy the situation. And they do talk, and they become friends. And because their parents are friends, Kirsten and Cameron are friends. 

They see quite a bit of each other, but it isn't like either of them remembers it. They are babies, after all. But they grow up together, side by side. When Cameron starts having problems with his heart, his best friend is there. When Kirsten's mother is in a car accident when they are 8, her best friend is there. When Cameron's father is put in jail, his best friend is there. They are there for each other, and that's just how it is. 

That's how it always is until it isn't. 

They're walking together home from the bus station, Cameron and Kirsten. They attend different schools, but they always meet at the bus station, catch the bus together, walk for a while, and then part ways to head to their respective homes. 

They're crossing the street when it happens. It's been awhile since Cameron's latest surgery, but he's only been back at school for a week or so, so Kirsten has been waiting for something to happen. When they're halfway across the street and Cameron stutters to a stop and grabs at his chest, she knows something's wrong. There's no one coming, but just in case, she tries to hurry him across the street. She does try, but he staggers, stumbles, almost falls. She's holding him up when she yells. "Help! Somebody, please! Help!" She clings to Cameron, desperately trying to get him to look at her. "Cameron! Cameron, come on, please..." He's turning gray, gasping like a fish out of water, pulling at his white uniform shirt because his heart is barely working and Kirsten is dragging him across the street when the drunk driver of the truck carrying contents that should be classified, should be illegal, careens around the corner. He's going so fast that Kirsten only has time to save one of them. Only one. So she does what the good friend would do and throws Cameron out of the way. 

His head hits the ground and hers hits the car and neither of them know anything. 

Cameron wakes up in a hospital bed, something he's used to. He's wearing an oxygen mask and his heart monitor is beep, beep, beeping steadily at his ear. His first conscious thought is Kirsten, so he says her name. Well, he tries to say her name. It comes out garbled and almost unintelligible. But his mother understands. 

"You can't see her," Ms. Goodkin says. "You're in no condition to get out of this bed, and you'll be lucky if I ever let you up again." Like any good rebellious teenager – he is 13 – he immediately attempts to defy her wishes but it takes a touch and he's down. His mother softens slightly. "She doesn't remember you," she says quietly. "She doesn't remember anyone."

He figures out later that the car that hit her was carrying something that definitely should've been illegal. It gives her serious chemical burns, like the ones on his right leg, but all over. They'll heal and go away eventually, but the impact of her head with both the truck and the pavement... She doesn't remember a thing.

He tries to contact her. Of course he tries to contact her. She's his best friend and she's been his best friend for years and years, ever since he was a tiny, unnamed thing, alone in the world save for the baby girl next to him. But her number is different and she is moved to another hospital for care by the time they've repaired his heart enough for him to go see her. 

She's gone. 

He thinks of her often, of course. He never, ever forgets her. He desperately tries to find her again when he reads a headline that 'Battlin' Stinger' has been killed in a boxing match, but she doesn't turn up. He thinks about her on her birthday, thinks about her when he hears bad country music about drinking in a pick-up and missing a girl. She always loved to make fun of that kind of music... He thinks about his best friend. 

He's asked once if he has an ex-girlfriend. He says no. He doesn't have an ex-girlfriend. He has an ex-best friend. And ex-maybe. An ex-almost. An ex-something. And he isn't wrong. They were never together. But maybe they could've been. 

He doesn't see her again until he's older. He's in law school, now. The chemical burns on his leg are dark scars that mottle his pale skin, matching the one long one down the center of his chest. His heart is still bad and he still misses Kirsten, but he's doing okay. He's made friends with a two very nice people, Linus and Camille. They're his friends. They met up playing X-Box online, and they play all kinds of things together. They're friends, even if they've never met in person. He's doing okay. He's doing okay until he's walking home from the bus stop late one night. 

Sure, Hell's Kitchen isn't the safest neighborhood, but the crime rate is so high that Cameron feels like it's a nice place to start up one's law practice. He plans to move here when he graduates in December, so since it's fall break, he's visiting. He has gotten turned around trying to get from the bus stop to the motel he's staying at and he finds himself going down a dark alley that he wouldn't normally go down. "Nothing's going to happen, Cameron," he tells himself. "It'll be fine. You'll be fine." 

He is fine for a few moments. He's fine until a dark shape emerges from the other end of the alley and starts towards him. Cameron's eyes widen and he starts to back up but the man is closer than he appears and he's waving a gun at Cameron. A real gun. A real, loaded gun. "Don't move," the man growls, but Cameron does, only to drop his phone and his wallet and put his hands in the air. The man with the gun stalks forward, brandishing it at Cameron with his eyes narrowed. "Alright, pick that shit up," he snaps, "and give me everything you got." Cameron's hands are shaking but he does, and he starts to take out all of the bills he has in his possession. He barely has the money out when he hears another voice. A familiar voice he'd last heard screaming his name. 

"I wouldn't give it to him if I were you."

Cameron and the man look up. There's someone on the roof of the building next to him, a woman. Her legs are dangling off the side and she's swinging them casually, her heels clipping the brick walls. Shadows cast her face into darkness until she tilts her head and the glow of a streetlamp illuminates her. It doesn't matter that it's dark because she's wearing a mask. Well, she's wearing half of a mask. It covers her eyes. The man with the gun starts to turn it on the woman, but he doesn't last long. She pushes herself off, doing a flip in midair before landing firmly with her feet spread slightly and her knees bent on the lid of a dumpster. 

"Put the gun down," she says firmly. "I'd really do it if I were you." The man snorts and rolls his eyes, firing the weapon. The bullet ricochets wildly and the mysterious woman launches into action. She flips again to miss it, going straight over the bullet before landing on her hands in a brief handstand before she finishes the spin out lands right in front of the man. The fight is over in seconds and she has his arms behind his back, the gun at her feet. She marches him to the wall, smacks his forehead against it, and drops his limp body.

The mysterious woman with the familiar voice steps back before rummaging in his pockets and taking out his phone. She dials 911 but doesn't press call, turning slightly to Cameron. "Did he hurt you?" She asks. "I don't smell blood. But your heart's racing." Cameron shook his head. "No, um... Uh... I'm... I'm fine, thank you." The woman stops dead. "No, you can't be," she says. "They told me he died."

Suddenly, it clicks. He knows where he's heard that voice before. 

"Kirsten?" He yelps. "Kirsten," she repeats, nodding. 

She places the 911 call, alerting the police to the mugger's whereabouts before she takes Cameron back to her apartment. They talk along the way. She tells him how she woke up after the surgery with no memory of, well... No memory of anything at all. No memories and covered in burns. She tells Cameron how a few weeks later, her memory starts coming back and she remembers Cameron. He interrupts for the first time. "My mom told me you forgot me," he stammers. Kirsten shrugs and says simply, "I could never forget you." Cameron's throat closes up and he lets her finish.

She tells him about the fight her dad threw. She tells him how she discovered shortly after that her father was a mutant and that they were going to expose him if he didn't throw the fight and die, and he took the coward's way out. She tells him how she discovers that she is a mutant, too, but not because her father was. The mutant DNA, dormant in her, was somehow 'activated' by the chemical burns. They healed without leaving a trace but now... Now she could do everything. All of her senses were so much better now. She tells him how she decided to start up her little night job because she might as well use her abilities for something good. 

Cameron finally speaks again. "Do you have a superhero name?" He asks, and she laughs. "No," she says. "I don't consider myself a superhero. Just someone trying to do right."

They get back to Kirsten's apartment and she takes the mask off. He asks why she wears it if she doesn't need it, and she shrugs and says that sometimes it's easier to focus when she blocks out one hyper-attentive sense. They talk for hours and hours, until Cameron is practically falling asleep on her sofa. "We should get coffee," he says sleepily. "We should get coffee. I'd ask you but I don't know where anything is in this town. So..." He looks expectantly at her and she laughs. His heart flutters. 

"Would you like to go for coffee?" She asks, and he nods before he promptly falls asleep.

They do go for coffee and they hang out all day after. Cameron considers that a date. He stays with her the rest of the fall break he's in Hell's Kitchen, and the last day, after their fifth date, they sleep together.

Cameron goes back to college. Kirsten fights crime. She also buys and X-Box and joins Cameron, Camille, and Linus. They don't see each other in person again until December, Cameron's graduation, which they skip to go get dinner. 

Cameron moves to Hell's Kitchen, but instead of finding an apartment, he moves in with Kirsten. She still fights crime while he looks for a place to start his practice. He doesn't like it, but he knows he can't stop her, and she always has the best intentions. She wants to help. So he patches her up when she comes home a little broken and they have dinner and then they go to bed and Cameron goes to work. Then, at night, Kirsten goes to work. 

She stops drug cartels. She stops weapons smuggling. Human trafficking. She saves lives, and so does Cameron. Just in different ways. 

But she's been acting odd lately. They've been living together for 3 years, but for the past 3 days she's been looking at him like something's off. And something is off. His right leg, the one covered in burn scars, has started hurting him. One day, she finally pinpoints it. "You smell different," she says. "Go to the doctor."

So, he does. And they figure out it's cancer. Apparently, Cameron's body did not take to the chemicals like Kirsten's mutant DNA had. Much like people get cancer from radiation, Cameron gets cancer from chemicals. Somehow, Kirsten knows as soon as he gets home. He doesn't have to say a word. They sit on the couch and she holds him tight, but for whose benefit it really is, neither of them know. "They don't know if I'll survive treatment," Cameron says finally. "With my heart. They don't know. It's so... Unique." 

Kirsten shakes her head. "No," she says. "Shut up. Shut up. We'll find a way. I didn't tell you because I knew you'd geek out, but... Maggie Baptiste came to me the other day." Cameron's eyes widen and he forgets he's dying. "Iron Woman?" He yelps. "And you didn't tell me?" Kirsten smiles at his giddy excitement. "She offered me a job," Kirsten says. "She offered me a job and I told her I'd think about it. She'll be able to do something that these hospitals can't do. You'll be fine."

All Cameron can think about is that he might get to meet Iron Woman. "Holy fuck," he whispers, and Kirsten laughs despite how scared she is. She didn't save him so many times to lose him to this. 

Hours later, lying awake in bed, Cameron thinks she's asleep but he speaks again. "If I do die, will you forget me?" He thinks he's talking to no one, but she answers. "I could never forget you," she says, and he smiles, and he knows that everything will be okay. 


End file.
